Being(s) In Love 03 - A Beginner’s Guide to Wooing Your Mate (19 page)

Zeki pushed his hands under Theo’s shirt and slid it up, gratified when Theo let him pull it free and toss it behind him. All of Theo’s skin was hot, werewolf hot, burning with energy and strength and the heat of his arousal. Theo was looking at him with a shining gaze Zeki could hardly stand. He leaned in as carefully as he could with his magic singing and kissed those eyes at the corners. He dragged his mouth over Theo’s until Theo’s was open. He couldn’t get over how soft his lips were. “Theo.” He had electricity in his fingertips, sparking out through the bandages, and he wanted to feel it everywhere. The more Theo wanted him, the less he could think. He ought to take his time, but in no way was he slowing down. “Theo, lie back.”

Theo did, scooting down easily but hardly breathing until Zeki followed him. Zeki knelt over him, eating up the sight of his swollen, open mouth and the spill of his hair, his bare chest. Zeki wasn’t nearly so naked, and tore at his sweater until it was gone. Theo was broad and heaving underneath him, wide-eyed and wanting, so he leaned onto one hand and let Theo prop him up so he could ease a hand down Theo’s jeans. The touch was barely anything, but Theo groaned. Theo was hard in his hand, Theo was holding on to him, Zeki would have given him anything, illicit or not.

“Zeki,” Theo murmured, quiet and straining, and pushed up. Zeki took his hand away long enough to lick between his fingers and then shoved it down between them. He should have undone Theo’s fly, offered more comfort, but Theo was holding him tight in a way that meant Zeki could feel every flex of muscle, every indrawn breath. He kissed whatever skin was in front of his mouth and murmured, “Teddy baby,” until Theo rumbled.

He had a second to remember that sound, and Theo’s control, and need, and then he wriggled back onto his knees. He ignored the bereft noise Theo made in order to yank Theo’s jeans open and use his mouth. He licked sloppily at beads of sticky precome instead of teasing, and grunted when Theo jerked and pushed up. Theo deserved more than a quick hand job, and Zeki wanted to give him everything, to make him keep saying, “Zeki,” in that stunned, needy voice until his throat was hoarse. He felt like he had no experience, nothing to woo Theo but an earnest desire to taste him, but Theo acted as if that was enough. Theo acted as if Zeki’s mouth was killing him.

He cupped the back of Zeki’s head with more gentleness than Zeki would have been capable of in his place, and choked out a warning. Zeki growled at him, a human growl, and then pushed forward eagerly to swallow. He swallowed twice, then pulled away to breathe before returning to take all he could. He sucked and licked until Theo sounded pained, then dropped to pant against Theo’s hip. Pleased with himself, he placed a kiss there, then dipped back for another brief taste. A were might have been able to taste Theo’s need, but a were couldn’t possibly have been more satisfied than Zeki in that moment, with Theo Greenleaf’s cock in his mouth.

“Who else?” Theo spoke in a drifting whisper. “Who else would it be but you?” His muscles flexed under Zeki’s hands while Zeki took everything from him, and when Zeki finally pulled away for good he couldn’t resist sliding a touch up from Theo’s thighs to his stomach. He let his mouth follow his hands.

Zeki exhaled in bone-deep pleasure. This was more than an immature fantasy. This was Theo on his back and trembling under him. Zeki had done that. If he hadn’t already been rocking forward in jeans that were too tight, that realization alone would have been enough to get him hard. He glanced into Theo’s flushed, sleepy face and sat up. It felt right to pop the button on his fly and ease down the zipper on his jeans to show Theo he wasn’t alone in wanting this so much.

Zeki licked his hand again, still reddened from stroking Theo, and got a good grip on himself. “Relax, I’ve got this,” he assured Theo, his throat sticky, and Theo twitched beneath him. “You lose a lot of shame with sex magic,” Zeki admitted breathlessly, his head up as he slowly got himself off. He shivered in delight when Theo placed his hands carefully on his hips and inched his fingers under Zeki’s shirt. He watched Theo watching him, his gaze exactly as hungry as before despite how the high voltage sting of magic had faded. Theo’s urgency was gone, but even with the magic flowing lightly between them, Zeki’s desire remained strong. Theo’s hands on him momentarily stole his voice. “It wasn’t a lot,” Zeki added, to bring the lights into Theo’s eyes again. “I wanted to learn the principles, not major in it. And it wasn’t like this.”

There was nothing like this. Talking was getting more and more difficult. Theo fanned out his fingers over Zeki’s stomach, holding Zeki up with no effort, all his senses seemingly riveted to Zeki’s cock and Zeki’s hand. Zeki writhed at the thought. How had he never considered what it would mean to bed a werewolf? He’d grown up in a town that sold itself as a werewolf love-slash-sex resort and yet he hadn’t let himself imagine this. He groaned. “Were you all the same way, during your trips to The Meadows?” he demanded, aware he was out of breath and wistful as well as jealous. “I know you went out there. I imagined you. It was… it was…. Imagining you out there used to drive me crazy.”

He leaned forward to kiss messily at Theo’s mouth. Whatever else he wanted to say was lost when he felt Theo unmistakably growing hard again.
Werewolves
. Zeki realized anew what that meant for a lover and grunted with both worry and delight. “Theo, you’re….” He thought of teenage werewolves, out of control and constantly aroused, thought of their paws all over Theo, and made a sound like a growl. “I hated that you went to The Meadows and didn’t take me. I would have… I would have….” He ground his hips down and shivered for Theo’s bolder hands. Theo pushed at his hips, taking his weight, and turned his head to inhale over the side of Zeki’s throat.

“This is how you are. I’ll know this about you now,” Theo gasped out, sentences short as if he was already unbearably aroused. Zeki’s lips felt raw from kissing him, but he couldn’t seem to stop, especially when Theo wrapped his big hand around both of them.

Zeki realized he was whining, a low, animal noise that might have bothered him if Theo hadn’t seemed to understand it. He nuzzled Zeki’s cheek and gripped him tight until Zeki gasped a warning. “Theo, I want to come.”

Theo licked at his skin, so slowly Zeki shook with it. “I know,” he answered, and of all things, it was the satisfied certainty in his voice that sent Zeki over the edge. He grabbed hard at Theo and jerked forward until he was spent, and didn’t care that he immediately collapsed onto Theo like he’d run a mile in gym class. He should care. He wanted to impress Theo, make Theo feel good, not pass out in his own come while Theo tried to get off again, but this was right.

Theo swept his tongue across the tip of Zeki’s ear, and Zeki thought he was learning what Zeki tasted like postorgasm. Zeki admired learning, and smiled. “Abracadabra,” he whispered and turned his face toward Theo again. “As it was spoken.”

He fumbled a hand down between them and rolled to the side so he could bat Theo’s hand aside and watch himself bring Theo off for a second time. Without all that urgency spurring him on, he could take the time to enjoy the view, the squeeze of his fingers, the flush of Theo’s cock, the tightening of his muscles. And when Theo finished again, both of them as worn out as if they’d been spellcasting, he drew his fingers through the mess of mingled semen on Theo’s chest and blessed him.

Theo rubbed his nose and let his hand fall. “Now I know this about you,” he said again, sighing like everything was perfect agony. “You marked me.”

“I’d mark you with blessings every day if I could,” Zeki retorted. He could hear the exhaustion in his voice, although he had a feeling Theo could probably get aroused again in no time. He licked at Theo, but to him, Theo only tasted like sweat. “I’d put symbols of protection all over your skin if I could make them last.”

Again, Theo sighed. “Something to make me think of you? To let others know?” Zeki couldn’t tell if Theo was happy or not, and turned to get a better look at him. Theo’s eyes were closed.

“The whole town is going to smell you on me anyway, right?” Zeki considered this. Everyone knowing they’d had sex would be embarrassing, but he’d once had to carry his books over his crotch whenever Theo was around. This didn’t compare. “Why shouldn’t they know?”

Theo swallowed. “I wish you could mark me and make it stay too.”

Zeki wasn’t a werewolf, but the idea was surprisingly arousing. Give him time and he’d have the proper response to it. He trailed his fingers through the drying mess again and tried to picture what he would do. “Theo,” he wondered after he started to catch his breath, “do you have other names?” They both knew Greenleaf was more an affiliation than a surname. He also knew not all cultures had naming traditions like his own. “You don’t have to tell me,” he added. “I was just curious.”

“A few,” Theo admitted, and looked at him. “I have a few. When I was a kid, my grandma called me her little sleeping bear. Don’t laugh.” Zeki tried to inhale his embarrassment but once again couldn’t. He nosed at Theo anyway. Theo brushed Zeki’s sweaty hair from his forehead with tentative motions. “What does Zeki mean?”

“Clever.” His mother’s mother, coincidentally, had given Zeki the name. “In Turkish it means clever.”

“You were named well.” Theo seemed amused.

“So were you, Teddy Bear.” Zeki couldn’t resist. He got a put-upon sigh but no real objection. Dating Theo might be nicer than he’d suspected. No one had ever dealt with his sense of humor for long, and he’d never been held like this after sex. It could have been a were thing or a Theo thing, but either way it felt nice to have Theo wiping sweat from his overheated skin. But things were going to get gross if one or both of them didn’t move. “We should probably clean ourselves up, or at least you, before you fall asleep.” He gestured at Theo’s stomach and then pushed himself up before he could talk himself out of it. Theo did in fact look like he could close his eyes and go to sleep. No one had ever fallen asleep in Zeki’s arms either. It was a strange thought, a sad thought, because Theo didn’t want to fall asleep with him. Theo had only ever wanted to rest in the arms of his mate.

At the thought, Zeki climbed off the couch. Theo watched him stumble to his feet and then got up as gracefully as ever. Zeki made a playful face at him and then continued on his weak-kneed path to the bathroom, with Theo close behind him. He pulled a towel from the closet as they went by, but Zeki snatched it and used it on Theo first once they got to the sink. “And we never made it to the bedroom. Or to dinner, for that matter.” Zeki clucked his tongue, not sorry as he washed down Theo’s abs.

Theo drew his eyebrows together in the mirror but bent his head to sniff behind Zeki’s ear. He kept his hands at his sides, although Zeki could see him open and close them almost anxiously. Once again Zeki wished he had a different understanding of how weres viewed things and hoped Theo wasn’t worried about another rejection.

“I wish we’d done that back then.” He wet a new corner of the towel to wipe at himself and then rinsed and dried his hands. He raised his head to study Theo’s reflection.

“I wanted to, so much,” Theo said earnestly, making Zeki try to reconcile that with their brief conversation in the school hallway. Theo continued to frown. “There were too many feelings, all at once, and I thought, if I touched you, they would make sense.”

Zeki recalled the sense of rightness during their first kiss and then shook the memory away. Theo was being very serious. “What do you mean? You barely touched me. I’ll grant you that might be a violation of Wolf’s Paw protocol, but it’s hardly a crime, Theo.”

“I didn’t ask right,” Theo insisted. “And I don’t know how to ask now. I don’t know what we are.”

“Well, I’ve made it more than clear that you have my permission to touch me.” Keeping his tone light didn’t relax Theo. If anything he stiffened his shoulders. Zeki turned around to study him directly. “Are you going to ask me to go to the Spring Thaw with you? Wait, you
were
going to ask me about it when you….” A pained expression crossed Theo’s face, and Zeki stopped. “Oh. Then what were you going to say that day, before I interrupted you?” He held up a hand at his own question, watching Theo get more and more miserable. “You acted like I slapped you, and you yanked your hand off me and apologized for getting it wrong. And then you ran.”

He tilted his head back. Theo’s eyes were sad.

Zeki shaped his name but couldn’t actually say it.

“That was five years ago. You were sixteen then.” He went on instead. At sixteen, or so the story went, Theo Greenleaf had unexpectedly recognized his mate and approached him, and his mate had told him no. Zeki covered his mouth, and Theo glanced away. Zeki’s brief, tossed-out guess returned to hit him in the chest. He stumbled into the sink. “Theo, am I your—” He hitched his breath. “Am I the one who rejected you?”

Theo had reached out to touch him in his excitement, but even then Zeki had known that wasn’t done. Werewolves indicate interest, but everything else is up to the other party, even other weres if it was a mating. But they waited, always, especially,
especially
, when it involved a human. That was one of Wolf’s Paw’s oldest traditions. Zeki didn’t know about the rest of the werewolves in the world, but he knew in Wolf’s Paw they would have frowned on Theo if they’d known.

“I shouldn’t have done it like that.” Theo kept his head down. “I wasn’t expecting it, and I got carried away.”

“You were sixteen!” Zeki jumped loudly to his defense. He yanked his T-shirt down and glared until Theo looked at him.

When calmer, Zeki might think about how he had only been seventeen and just as unlikely to make a good decision, but right now that seemed far away. Almost as far away as the idea of being Theo’s instinctual life partner, which he deliberately was not thinking about. “It’s not supposed to happen so young. How else were you supposed to react? Hold on.” Zeki put a hand out, and Theo took a step back. Zeki heard his voice getting higher. “You thought I knew!” Everything Theo had said to him made sense now. “You thought I knew and—” The sheriff came to mind. “The entire town knew!” He had no patience for Theo’s wince. “You thought I knew we were mates and still you… you… brought me brownies! You—
we
just….” He waved between their bodies. “And you let me say all those things about not being your mate and how we had something. Yes, we had something, and you didn’t tell me! I’m human, Theo, how was I supposed to know?”